1. 1FOSSA Conference
8 – 10 November 2010
J.Benzakki & D.Courtaud
The CoMEte Project
( Course on Mozilla Education
and Technologies @ Evry )
Judith Benzakki & Didier Courtaud
Email : judith.benzakki@univ-evry.fr
didier.courtaud@univ-evry.fr
2. 2FOSSA Conference
8 – 10 November 2010
J.Benzakki & D.Courtaud
FOSS market
● The FOSS market has a huge expansion rate
33 % in 2009 and 30 % in 2010 ( estimated )
1470 M€ in 2009 in France
● FOSS is now used everywhere
Administrations
Public sector
Big companies
● FOSS becomes mandatory
"Up to 2012, at least 80 % of all the softwares will use
FOSS" ( GARTNER Group)
3. 3FOSSA Conference
8 – 10 November 2010
J.Benzakki & D.Courtaud
FOSS & Education
● There is an important need of "FOSS-formed"
engineers in the companies
Cost of the projects become important
Need of new technologies : Web 2.0, rich applications
● It is the role of University to develop new FOSS
cursus
To help students find a good job
Make them discover new job opportunities
To help communities to create new technologies
Standards, interoperability, independance
To help the development of the Numerical Economy
4. 4FOSSA Conference
8 – 10 November 2010
J.Benzakki & D.Courtaud
Why Mozilla ?
● The Mozilla Foundation is leading major FOSS projects
including Firefox, Thunderbird, Fennec, ..
● The technologies which are used to build these
products are
At the leading edge of innovation
Web standards based
Universal
● They give a new paradigm to make Web applications
Faster
More easy to maintain
More interoperable
5. 5FOSSA Conference
8 – 10 November 2010
J.Benzakki & D.Courtaud
Before CoMETE
● We began to experiment teaching these technologies
on a small scale
A few courses in 2007-2008
Several successful student projects
● From these first experiments, we understood that
These technologies were ready to use
They define a new design paradigm for Web applications
On the Internet
But also on the Intranets
6. 6FOSSA Conference
8 – 10 November 2010
J.Benzakki & D.Courtaud
The CoMETE project
● The CoMETE project comes from
The results of our first experiments
The launch in parallel of the Mozilla Education Initiative
and also the Web Science Initiative
The will of the MIAGE of Evry to be a leader in Web
technologies learning
● Goal of the project
To learn the students all the Mozilla technologies in
order they can invest themselves
In Mozilla or Mozilla-related products or in extensions to
these products
To spread Mozilla technologies into the companies through the
students
To make available on line educationnal ressources on
Mozilla technologies
7. 7FOSSA Conference
8 – 10 November 2010
J.Benzakki & D.Courtaud
CoMETE audience
● About 30 students were involved in the CoMETE
projects in 2009
A special "Learning Unit" has been created for them
inside the MIAGE cursus
MIAGE is a well known French National Diplom in
Computer Science at the M2 level of the European LMD
schema
Some of the students combine work and academc study
They are employees of a company and they work directly for
the company's Intranet
8. 8FOSSA Conference
8 – 10 November 2010
J.Benzakki & D.Courtaud
CoMETE contents
● The CoMETE project is divided into two parts
● Theoretical learnings are given by experts who
contribute to Mozilla for a long time
Laurent Jounneau and Fabien Cazenave ( the project
lead of Kompozer )
Equivalent to one full week
Spread over a month
The courses end with periods where students can test
the technologies by themselves
9. 9FOSSA Conference
8 – 10 November 2010
J.Benzakki & D.Courtaud
CoMETE contents ( II )
● Each student must do a practical project
( 40h / 3 months )
Proposed by the Mozilla community
To develop Mozilla or Mozilla related projects
Proposed by the companies where the students work
If the companies accept to use the Mozilla technologies
● Each project ( ie each student ) has
A project lead from the Community or the Company
A project lead from the University
Both project leads work together
To follow the project
To evaluate the project at the end
10. 10FOSSA Conference
8 – 10 November 2010
J.Benzakki & D.Courtaud
CoMETE contents ( III )
● Each project is managed as an Open Source project
Wiki and/or blog to follow the schedule of the project
And to publish the differents releases of code
Three intermediate versions of code that can be tested
by everybody
Collaborative work is encouraged
With all other students
With the Mozilla community
At the end of the project
The student must write a report explaining the result of their
project, how and why this has been done
There is a public oral presentation of all the projects
All the students are evaluated on the contents of their work
but also on their "contributiveness" in other projects
11. 11FOSSA Conference
8 – 10 November 2010
J.Benzakki & D.Courtaud
CoMETE : first year
● The results of the first year of the project are
Students are enthusiastic to participate
They are astonished by the quality of management of
FOSS projects
Most of them were discovering FOSS
All the projects have been well driven by the students
and the projects leads
The resulting production of the projects is fairly good
Some projects are even better
http://kazhack.org/tmp/jnm10 ( in French )
12. 12FOSSA Conference
8 – 10 November 2010
J.Benzakki & D.Courtaud
CoMETE : student feedbacks
● What students say about CoMETE :
"It is marvelous to discover Open Source projects.We
did not know this part of Computer Science"
"We did not imagine that FOSS projects were so well
structured"
"We could apply immediately what we have learned in
concrete projects"
"It is amazing to see that the jobs we have done is
taken into account in the next release"
"It is the first time that we understand why we have
learned this technology or another"
"We have discovered how to code in cooperation and it
is at the same time funny and professionnal"
"Saying that we have participated to a FOSS project is
a good point to find a job"
13. 13FOSSA Conference
8 – 10 November 2010
J.Benzakki & D.Courtaud
CoMETe results
● A "win-win" partnership between the Mozilla Foundation
and the University of Evry
● The Mozilla technologies will diffuse into the
Information Systems of many companies
● A lot of students will remember this course when in
industry
To introduce and use these technologies
To collaborate to Mozilla products
● In any case, many of them will continue to contribute
● This partnership is also a good point for the University
Many students are attracted by this course
14. 14FOSSA Conference
8 – 10 November 2010
J.Benzakki & D.Courtaud
Conclusion
● The ComETe project is the beginning of a durable
partnership between The Mozilla foundation and the
University of Evry.
University of Evry is one of the European sites of the
Mozilla Education Initiative
Possible partnerships with Seneca in Canada or Juan
Carlos in Spain
● It is the first step to a more generalized introduction
of FOSS in the academic cursus
One goal of the MIAGE Evry is to promote Web Science
at large and a lot of its courses are already dedicated
to Web technologies